Think you don't need an organ donor opt-out card? Think again -- the Burns case

By Paul A. Byrne, M.D.

Very few people look forward to going to the doctor. Even fewer look forward to being a patient in a hospital. Some people have an irrational fear of hospitals. This is not a good thing. On the other hand, having a rational fear of hospitals these days is not only a good thing, it is a necessity given the high level of lust and desire for the speedy acquisition of vital organs that drives the transplantation industry. A case in point: the near (true) death of Colleen Burns.

According to the Syracuse Post-Standard, in October 2009, Colleen S. Burns, 41, was taken to the emergency room at St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center for assistance after suffering a drug overdose. The ER nurse who attended Burns reported to the doctors that the patient was recovering from the overdose, but the same physicians insisted that Burns was dead, and pronounced her so, making her "dead" for legal purposes and an eligible candidate for organ transplantation.

A call was placed to Colleen's family members informing them that she had passed away, and a pitch was made for organ retrievable. The still grieving family subsequently agreed to the withdrawal of life support and the harvesting of Colleen's vital organs for transplantation into waiting recipients.

The problem, of course, was that Colleen Burns, like all vital organ transplant donors, was not truly dead, because you can't retrieve healthy vital organs from a cadaver. In fact, all the evidence pointed to the fact that Colleen Burns was alive. When a nurse performed a mandatory reflex test on Colleen Burns, her toes curled downward. She was successfully breathing on her own, independent of a hospital respirator. And her lips and tongue were said to have moved moments before the transplant physician prepared to cleave her chest in two and begin extracting her vital organs.

At this point, one would think the transplant physician would have called for immediate aid for the donor, but instead, he ordered the attending nurse to administer a powerful sedative, so he could continue his mission, which was obviously to get at Burn's organs. The nurse complied, more interested in keeping her job than preventing the murder of a patient, but then, in her heart of hearts, the nurse always knew that you can't get viable organs from a corpse and that the organ donors to whom she administered the sedative were not "quite" dead. Hence the need to give donor patients paralyzing/anesthetic drugs to make sure they do not move while they are being hacked in two, at which point they are truly dead.

continue reading at www.renewamerica.com

 Dr. Paul A. Byrne is a Board Certified Neonatologist and Pediatrician. He is the Founder of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at SSM Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center in St. Louis, MO. He is Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at University of Toledo, College of Medicine. He is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics and Fellowship of Catholic Scholars.

"Pope Francis I"

Pope Francis I

'My Jesus, by the compassion which You felt for Your Mother, have compassion on me, and permit me to share in her intercession with You. O Mary, afflicted Mother, intercede for me with your Son, that by His sufferings I may be saved from the wrath which is to come.' . . . [Click for more]

Black socialist pope to follow black socialist president?

With African Catholic Cardinal Peter Turkson in the running as the next pope, the media have noted that he carries the fancy title of the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, an arm of the Vatican. But they have failed to note the existence of a left-wing lobby in the U.S. working feverishly on his behalf. It is the same group of radicals, with connections to billionaire hedge-fund operator George Soros, who backed Obama for president by claiming he shared their Catholic values.

Why America's elite hates the American way

"The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk," Hegel wrote. But is this flight of wisdom cause or consequence? Some people assume that his words accurately describe the fact that concrete understanding is a consequence of history. Yet if history is change (and that for the worse), it could just as well mean that history is the consequence of the departure from wisdom, to which are attached the chains of causality that enwrap the towers of human aspiration. For wisdom focuses on truth and flies steadfastly toward its goal, blind to the mirages of fanciful hope conjured by thirsting human ambitions.

If we take the American republic as our example, we observe that what begins in wisdom comes to its end because the heirs to that beginning depart from the wisdom that made it possible. America's founders made respect for truth the foundation upon which they built their hopes for just government, which is to say a government respectful of man's natural liberty. To this end, they instituted America's government upon a careful respect for the idea of right, doing so more explicitly and with greater deliberate care than had ever been seen before in human history.

For all his many errors (rooted mainly in his disregard for the Western Christian acknowledgment of the Incarnation), Hegel appreciated the absolutely fundamental importance of the concept of right, which reflects the preoccupation with justice that is at the heart of any rational understanding of human governance. He did not, of course, conflate right and freedom, as minds victimized by his errors are prone to do in our day. But because he overlooked the importance of the Incarnation, Hegel did not think through the fact that the reconciliation of right and freedom in human terms continually takes place in and through individuals, who therefore persistently represent the concrete realization of human freedom in universal terms, prior to and quite apart from any manifestation of their collective will in the State.

Schopenhauer (and his rebellious offspring, Friedrich Nietzsche) understood Hegel's error but, like him, rejected the Christian understanding of the Incarnation. Schopenhauer's reification of will, though it makes possible the exaltation of individual human achievement, does so without proper regard for the formal requirements of objective human existence. The willful "arrow of longing" is tipped with a coldly destructive flame. It sets alight the sacrificial pyre on which to make a holocaust of individuals, burning away every appearance of humanity. Such are the pyres that produced the billowing darkness of 20th century slaughter, in which the lights of a perverted science reveal, where once were nations, the charnel houses of the living dead.

Such especially is the state and condition of Europe in the light-deprived dawn of the 21st century. However, the wisdom of America's founding has properties that should inoculate Americans against the intellectual and spiritual plague that is spreading through the world on westerly winds of decadent change. And for a time, it did. But after several decades of miseducation and indoctrination, America's elites have been thoroughly infected. They seem now almost entirely enthralled by forces hostile to the wise moderation of the American founding and the reverence for God's authority that is its strong foundation. In service to that hostility, they seek quite literally to demoralize the American people. By every available means, they are bathing the nation's moral foundations in the corrosive acid of spiritual, intellectual, and moral libertinism. There is no God; there is no truth; there are no limits; there is no law, except the will to power and sensual pleasure, and a palpably false compassion for those unable, without let or hindrance, to seize or be seized with its voracious appetites. In the course of this dissolution, the sense of justice degrades into vengeful wrathfulness. Within whited sepulchers embossed with purported scenes of youthful love and sexuality, the aesthetic sensibility decomposes into lofty, cruel, self-worshipping hedonism. All that distinguishes self-conscious humanity within the flux of mindless, heartless, insensible chaos is dismissed as prejudice and superstition.

All this takes place by way of preparation for returning humankind to its long condition of servitude to the unbridled passions of a vainglorious few. Yet this aim abuses the name of "progress" and pretends to proffer paradise on earth, with no question of God to overlook our pride. This latter is the key to understanding why America's elites have turned against the way of life that made them so outstanding. Precisely because it respected their capacity for freedom, that way of life forced them to choose at every turn between doing what served their ambition and doing what they knew to be right.

How many of them have risen to what seemed like the very pinnacle of personal success by selling themselves – body, soul, and conscience – to shadowy power brokers that demanded the sacrifice of all. How many of them found in the fulfillment they so longed for that they had lost their very selves and ended up, like the fallen angels in Milton's "Paradise Lost," chewing dust and bitter ashes. This bitterness is the fruit of their bad conscience; the inescapable sense that for perishable goods, they have surrendered the true and only substance of their imperishable goodness. Too proud to admit that their fate springs from self-deception, they turn against the very way of life that, because it respected their capacity for freedom, allowed them the opportunity thus to abandon themselves. And so they long to exact revenge on all who chose to place conscience above ambition. What better revenge than to lure or force them into making the same sacrifice of conscience and right, until all are burning in the lake of fire, nourished with bitter ashes.

Instructed by the truth they found in Scripture, America's founders knew the self-defeating result of vain ambition. When they trusted America's fate to the sovereignty of the majority of the people, it was not because they thought them smarter or materially stronger than the few. It was because they realized that in most human beings, conscience ends up being more decisive than ambition, so that for the most part people are too cautious to let ambition betray them into sacrificing it.

Now we are in the midst of an insidious form of war against the American republic, testing that reliance upon the people's natural decency. I wonder when and whether enough Americans will awaken to the fact that the vengeful bad conscience of our anti-American elite lies at the heart of the threat now poised to dissolve our way of life. Americans of good conscience are slow to understand that, by remaking them in its own image, the force of evil that informs bad conscience seeks to destroy both them and their country.


By Alan Keyes

Proposing that society 'reduce' evil

The evil and the horror that are abortion and the blatant disregard for the value of human life cannot be overcome by merely reducing their amount. When people continually commit atrocities, lives are continually lost. The only way to combat this is to completely eradicate this evil. Today's commentary addresses this.
In March of 1981 Pope John Paul II told his audience during the March 15 Angelus message, "Our prayer during Lent, aims at awakening [consciences]," and making men aware of God's voice. "'Harden not your heart,' says the psalmist. In fact, the necrosis of consciences, their indifference to good and evil, their deviation are a great threat to humans. Indirectly, they are also a threat to society because, ultimately, the human conscience depends on the level of morality of society."

This quotation has immense relevance in today's cultural chaos. We are seeing a shift in the discussion about matters relating to respect for the human person – a slow but steady change that has not been beneficial to the most vulnerable among us.

For example, the marketing of euthanasia, which is no longer identified by that name, is fast becoming a menu of options, including assisted suicide, palliative care, and a plethora of other names most accurately defined as "third path."

But as priest-physician Father Myles Sheehan recently explained to a group of Boston's Catholic priests, "There is a bottom line that we have the fifth commandment 'Thou shalt not kill,' and the killing of innocent life is considered intrinsically evil, that is, it is always wrong."

Sheehan was speaking about a proposed assisted suicide law in Massachusetts. Yet he is also touted as an expert on the use of palliative care and has been instrumental in helping family members make decisions – such as the removal of a ventilator from a patient who is dying – that are not necessarily in keeping with Catholic teaching.

As we have noted before, the ventilator is not going to "keep" anyone alive, but it is going to make the work of the lungs less painful until death occurs. It has also been shown that the ventilator can even help people live better lives.

The point is that the level of morality mentioned by Pope John Paul II is reduced when apologists for the Catholic position on the subject of end-of-life care deviate from solid principles in order to excuse actions that, in the final analysis, compromise Catholic teaching.

The same can be said about abortion. In a recent guest column written for the Washington Post, USCCB's Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, wrote about five things that could be done to "reduce" abortion in America. He listed fighting poverty, ending public funding of abortion, passing laws to regulate abortion mills, supporting marriage, and promoting "sexual risk avoidance" for the young as things he recommends in order to reduce abortion even as it remains legal in America.

These are goals that he suggests would have broad public support and that would, at the same time, recognize and respect the "autonomy and dignity of women." But what these proposals fail to take into account is the overriding message that such recommendations are not sending.

Imposing rules on abortion facilities recognizes the legitimacy of the places where babies are being killed. Making sure that taxpayers do not subsidize the act of abortion means that as long as somebody else in the private sector is paying for the act of killing, no problem! Fighting poverty, supporting traditional marriage, and helping young people appreciate the virtue of purity require serious cultural changes and that means education, not lobbying.

In other words, while I am not criticizing Doerflinger – who is recognized as an expert on political efforts to address abortion on Capitol Hill – I am suggesting that we are barking up the wrong tree. The agenda that he has set forth is not getting at the root cause of the problem this nation has in appreciating the value of each and every human being and his intrinsic human rights.

We cannot correct this problem with legislation or with court decisions. What we need is education based on the very point Pope John Paul II made for us when he reminded us that "necrosis of consciences, their indifference to good and evil, their deviation are a great threat to humans. Indirectly, they are also a threat to society because, ultimately, the human conscience depends on the level of morality of society."

So let us help our fellow human beings revisit truth and recognize this sadistic indifference. Reducing evil is not the right path; exposing evil and eliminating it is the only way to go.


 By Judie Brown

Every horrid thing you need to know about how healthcare is paid for today

"Despite more than sixty years of government efforts – representing the work of both political parties – we are moving further and further away from what we want. Prices are higher, more people are excluded from needed care, more excess treatments are performed, and more people die from preventable errors. Why?"

'Heralds of the Second Coming'

 Below is the foreword to the soon-to-be-released book Heralds of the Second Coming: Our Lady, the Divine Mercy and the Popes of the Marian Era from Blessed Pius IX to Benedict XVI, authored by Stephen Walford and published by Angelico Press. The foreword was written by Cardinal Ivan Dias, prefect emeritus of the (Vatican) Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Thanks to Mr. Walford and Angelico Press for allowing me to reprint this excerpt in my column. Click here for Angelico Press' website. The book should be available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com in the coming days.

Fixing our kids

 

 

Today's commentary advises us to take a step back and look at the next generation that we are attempting to raise. Do we see a generation of young people concerned about their health, about academic success, about future families, about morality? Or do we see these same children living in the here and now, and only for their own selfish needs? And how do we go about fixing this devastating societal problem? Judie Brown offers words of encouragement.

Driving out demons

 

When leadership fails, those following often tend to fail as well. Our country and our Church cannot survive without strong leaders – and we need them now more than ever.

What the sex lives of California mice can tell you

According to Cheryl Rosenfeld, an associate professor of biomedical sciences in the University of Missouri's Bond Life Science Center, loading up a bunch of California mice with a mega-dose of bisphenol A (BPA) showed researchers that "What we have observed in those models is that BPA affects male rodents differently from females."

Obama's carbon dioxide lies

The utter desperation of the "Warmists," the advocates of global warming – now called climate change – is evident in a recent "study" reported in the Daily Caller in which "an international team of researchers" concluded that "earthworms could be contributing to global warming." Earthworms!

The Fluke doctrine

Today's commentary addresses the sad fact that one woman's words and desires can not only influence so many, but be said to be a model for women everywhere. What's even more tragic is that so many misguided souls listen to, and believe, her. This is why we must listen to the voice of another woman – a woman who lives and teaches Christ's truths – for a clear understanding about the moral decline of society today. For it is only when we hear the truth that we will be able to live the truth.

Priest: Boy Scouts should keep gays out; Killer Carhart kills mom, baby

Regarding the brouhaha over the Boy Scouts possibly accepting leaders who identify as gay or lesbian, I've asked Father Richard Perozich, a priest of the Diocese of San Diego, for his take on the matter. Father's comments are as follows. (For those who might be wondering, I fully agree with his analysis.)

Oppose Obama...prepare to die!

By now, most of you are likely aware of the 16-page DOJ memo outlining Obama's plan to kill US citizens at will...whenever and wherever he likes. The "rules of law' the Obama syndicate members appear to be using are those laws consisting of Obama's plans to bring them into existence via Executive Orders and existing law that he and his attorneys will deem – whether they are or not – supportive of their master's "right" to kill anyone he says is a terrorist, a potential terrorist or someone he thinks might be a terrorist in the future. In other words, via Obama and New World Order 'logic,' Obama can kill anyone he deems dangerous...even ideologically to himself, personally. That of course, includes anyone and everyone who opposes him. Currently, the memo pertains to killing US citizens without charges or a trial or even legal assistance for the targeted citizen outside of the country. Under the US Constitution killing US citizens without due process of existing law is not allowed – whether in or out of the country. All it would take for Obama to decide to kill US citizens in their homes – those who "offend" him – would, apparently, be another swipe of his pen in the form of yet another illegal Executive Order; the same type of Executive Order that most members of Congress have, thus far, patently ignored.

Regarding the memo, Judge Andrew Napolitano stated: "It basically says that the president of the United States can authorize an 'informed, high-level official of the U.S. government' to strip the constitutional protections of an American in a foreign country if the informed official is satisfied that the American is an imminent danger to American national security and his capture or arrest would be impractical, That is basically the power claimed by kings and tyrants. 'I can suspend the law to get you if you are a danger.'"

Note: Please remember that in the 1970s ObamaFriend and real terrorist Bill Ayers (via FBI informant Larry Grathwohl) said that over 25,000,000 (that's 25 millions, folks) Americans would likely have to be exterminated because they would be too loyal to the US Constitution, too capitalistic and would not be able to be "reeducated" Soviet style. It would seem that, in true Obama fashion for his friends, one of Bill Ayers' fondest wishes is about to be realized. By the way, in that same video (see source material below) the references to giving China and Russia US land on US homeland soil was and still is one of Ayers' desires. Via Obama dictate – and a willing and/or cowed Congress – China is already setting up camp in various portions of the USSA and is planning to set up more of them. Colleague Eric Rush offers excellent insight into portions of this and Obama's determination to disarm the American public in his recent column "The Darkest Design of Barack Obama."

Every day now, Barack Obama is doing more to destroy our country and us. Each day, said destruction becomes bolder and bolder. If bullies and tyrants aren't stopped this is what, inevitably, happens and lives are summarily destroyed or ended. Alexander (the Great) did it. Hitler did it. Stalin did it. Mao did it. Pol Pot did it, amongst countless others. Now, Barack Hussein Obama is working to do it and become more tyrannical than any of the rest. My column in 2008 "Is the USA ready for an American Stalin" was more prescient than I realized at the time. Few of our "leaders" have been or are currently willing to take on the would-be greatest tyrant of them all. It appears that we columnists and those web sites that continue to fight the beast are, almost, the only vocal ones left. We can only pray that there are a few true leaders who will light the torch of freedom – once again – in order to bring back both sanity and liberty to the God-fearing country that was once a beacon and safe harbor to the world. For, we cannot truly continue, at all, on our present course; a course which already includes death. So, either way, Obama plans to "get" US citizens and those on the federal level – think Boehner and the other RINOs – have already told us they are powerless or unwilling to stop the onslaught.

It, again, is up to We-the-People. How many are willing to put on the armor of God, pick up Obama's gauntlet and slap him back?

"For this God is our God for ever and ever: he will be our guide even unto death" – Psalm 48:14


DOJ 16-page memo: http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf

Judge Napolitano On Drone Strikes: Nowhere Justifiable Under The Constitution Or Federal Law: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aSCzfoXJL6Y#!

Napolitano: Obama 'stealing' American lives: http://www.wnd.com/2013/02/napolitano-obama-stealing-american-lives/

Larry Grathwohl on Ayers' plan for American re-education camps and the need to kill millions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWMIwziGrAQ

The Darkest Design of Barack Obama: http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/52504

Is the USA Ready for an American Stalin? http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/5827

By Sher Zieve

The economy is a lot worse than you think

Most Americans know the economy is in bad shape even if a majority voted to reelect the man most responsible for making a bad economy worse. And, no, it was not George W. Bush who is responsible for the 2008 financial crash. It was the government with its housing programs that encouraged giving mortgage loans to those who could not afford them and then bundling those "toxic assets," and selling them to banks who then found themselves in trouble for investing in them.

Another partner in the nation's financial woes has been the Federal Reserve, a banking cartel given the right to literally print money. The Fed recently released the fact that its holdings in U.S. government debt has increased by 257 percent since President Obama took office! Those holdings are at an all-time record of $1,696,691,000,000 at the close of business on Wednesday, January 23. The other major holder of our debt is China at $1,170,100,000.000.

It's worth taking a few minutes to see how the policies of President Obama, whether a deliberate effort to ruin the economy or just the result a lack of understanding of how the U.S. economy works, has put the U.S. on the precipice of failure comparable to what is occurring in Europe. It is a global, as well as national problem as the central banks of the EU desperately transfer billions among themselves to stave off a catastrophe that will destroy the wealth of their citizens.

The federal government ran a deficit (the difference between what it owes and what revenues it takes in) of $292 billion for the first two months of fiscal year 2013 – October and November 2012 – amounting to $4.8 billion of borrowed money every day. The Congressional Budget Office reported that federal revenues rose by $30 billion – a ten percent increase over last year – but spending increased even more, going up by $87 billion (16%).

Spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security was about 7% higher – $8 billion than last year. For years, Congress has resisted reforming these "entitlement" programs and Obamacare has only exacerbated the problem. In order to fund its establishment, the Obama administration took $716 billion from the Medicare funds. The Social Security funds have been "borrowed" by Congress for years while the numbers of eligible senior citizens has steadily increased as "baby boomers" come of age.

The call for higher taxes on "millionaires and billionaires" has fallen hardest on the middle class, in reality increasing taxes on them. The reality is that the middle class taxpayer pays 25% of their income in federal income tax these days, but when you add in 13.3% in the federal Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, it adds up to 38.3%. According to the Tax Foundation, the average state's income tax rate on the middle class is 4.82% (not all states have an income tax in addition to the federal government.) That brings the total to $43.12% of middle class income drained off to pay taxes.

Add in all the other taxes we pay on gasoline, telephones, and other necessities, and the middle class is being tapped for half their earnings.

The Republican Party, in power in the House of Representatives, has offered legislation to bring some relief to middle class and other taxpayers. It has sent annual budgets to the Senate where they have died for the past three years.

All this has been happening during the first term of the Obama administration. In a January 25th commentary posted on AmericanThinker.com, Steve McCann noted that "As of the end of 2012, the United States has experienced the worst five-year period – which includes, as the end of the final four years, Obama's first full term – since 1928-1932 and the start of the Great Depression."

McCann cited that fact that, since January 2008, the employment age population has increased by 11.7 million, yet there are 3.0 million fewer Americans employed. "Factoring in the population growth and 2008 labor participation rate, the unemployment rate for December 2012 would be 11.4% as compared to 4.9% in December of 2007."

"At the end of 2007, the median household income was $54,489 (inflation adjusted); at the beginning of 2012, it had dropped to $50,020 – a decline of nearly 9%." During this same time, while incomes were eroding, the cost of living increased 20% from December 2007 to September 2012.

There are other stark statistics that the mainstream media tends to under-report. In December 2007, there were 26.5 million Americans on food stamps at a cost of $30 billion. By December 2012, 47.4 million were using this program and the federal government was running advertising to get more to apply for it. During Obama's first term, food stamp recipients increased at a rate of 11,133 per day!

No matter how one measures the U.S. economy, the news is bad and holds little promise of improving. Economic growth is anemic as Obama increased debt $50,521 per household in his first term, more than the first 42 presidents in 53 terms combined.

An excellent monthly publication, Budget and Tax News, published by The Heartland Institute, is a very good way to gain the information and insight you need to understand these issues.

No need to wonder why Obama wants to increase the debt ceiling and no need to wonder why his policies continue to cripple the economy, whether it's the failure to approve the Keystone XL pipeline or to rein in an avalanche of economy-killing regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency. Obamacare contained 18 hidden taxes when it was passed by a Democrat-controlled Congress that didn't even read its more than 2,000 pages.

At some point this combination of increased taxes, low employment, and stagnant economic growth has to implode. That outcome can be avoided, but the nation is running out of time.


Alan Caruba

Destroying the U.S. military

The author of "1984," George Orwell, once said, "The quickest way to end a war is to lose it."

Comparing two inaugural speeches, Reagan's and Obama's

 

 

A comparison between Ronald Reagan's and Barack Obama's first inauguration speeches reveals the gap between their understanding of the role of government and how much America has declined from January 1981 and January 2009.

Mortal life without end? Really?

A "perfect" person with no flaws, no illnesses, super strength, and a long life. Sound great in theory, doesn't it? Who wouldn't want to eradicate suffering and loss? But think of the cost and the different kind of loss that would result. With these "superhuman" characteristics come the loss of free will, the loss of our uniqueness, and the loss of what makes us human. God has created us in His image and likeness. If we strip ourselves of that and become essentially robots, where will that leave us? More importantly, where will that leave our souls? Today's commentary addresses what could happen if we allow technology to eat away at our humanity.

The EPA is a nation-killer

To the naïve and uninformed, the Environmental Protection Agency exists to ensure clean air and water in the nation. That was its initial mandate when it was created by an executive order by President Nixon in 1970. It has since become a nation killer.

In 2013 a flood of regulations will cost thousands of Americans their jobs and drive more industry overseas to avoid the cost of doing business in America. It will drive up the cost of energy from electricity, along with the cost of gas and diesel fuel. It will effectively kill much of the coal mining industry in a nation that is the Saudi Arabia of coal, an energy source that formerly provided fifty percent of all electricity in America.

The EPA is girding up to kill "fracking," a technology that has safely been in use for decades and one that holds the promise of further provision of natural gas. The provision of oil is being thwarted as well; mostly famously by Obama's derailment of the Keystone XL pipeline in a nation laced with energy-providing pipelines. Energy, the lifeblood of the nation, will be under attack as never before.

A new EPA ozone standard will occur, one that the EPA estimates would cost $90 billion a year while other studies put the figure at nearly a trillion dollars and destroy 7.4 million jobs. The EPA's projections are that 650 additional communities would be deemed "non-compliant" and effectively ensure plant closings and that no new manufacturing and other businesses would set up shop.

The EPA has pushed to regulate — control — every body of water in America, no matter how small. A recent court decision derailed EPA storm-water regulations that would have established a first-time standard for post-construction storm-water runoff could include mandates on cities to change existing buildings, storm-water sewer systems, and streets. It would have been the most expensive rule in EPA history.

The EPA will release regulations on the manufacture of cement — the MACT rule — that would increase the cost of manufacturing this essential element of construction by 22% to 36%. Many such plants would have to close and the U.S. would have to import cement from nations like China.

Expect regulations on cooling towers to protect fish under the Clean Water Act. A proposed coal ash rule could cost between $79 to $110 billion over the next twenty years, ending between 183,900 and 316,000 jobs over 20 years, affecting states that include Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Missouri. The EPA has been regulating "farm dust" for decades and new rules would affect the nation's food supplies as farmers and ranchers adjust by raising fewer livestock and the till fewer fields. Spill prevention rules would further impact farmers and ranchers.

If you were asked what is the most costly federal agency which would you suggest? Would it be the Department of Homeland Security? Department of Defense? Labor? Agriculture? Housing and Urban Development? Transportation?

In terms of the regulations it generates, the Environmental Protection Agency is the most expensive rulemaking agency. It costs $353 billion annually to comply with its regulations.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute recently published a report by Ryan Young, a Fellow in Regulatory Studies, regarding the EPA and it is further testimony to the way this predatory agency has gone from the first year of its operation in 1971, costing $701 million, to outlays in 2011 of $10.722 billion, employing 20,610 full-time workers.

The public is expected to believe that this army of environmental bureaucrats are all diligently saving Americans from particulates in the air, rain run-offs in the water, any pesticide that might actually protect them from pests, and the countless other life-threatening dangers that required, from 1999 to 2011, a total of 4,995 rules in the "Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions."

These regulations have little to do with clean air and water and everything to do with destroying the nation's economy, putting thousands out of work at a time when economic growth is barely occurring, and new taxes will further reduce the spending and investment power of Americans.

After having put in motion the flood of regulations that will strangle the economy, EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, will step down after Obama's inauguration. Her decision came after a law suit by the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Chris Horner will make known the thousands of emails Jackson sent under an alias, a practice forbidden to federal employees, presumably shedding light on policies and views she intended to be kept secret.

Reacting to the news of her forthcoming resignation, S.T. Kornick, Director of Research for The Heartland Institute, said, "Jackson played the environmental 'bad cop' to President Obama's 'good cop,' but the result of their tag-team effort has been a huge expansion of the EPA's power. Appointing another bad cop to head the EPA could by itself push the nation into recession."

The most powerful economy in the world is being destroyed from within by an agency that has declared war on America. It must be downsized and restrained if the nation is to survive.

Alan Caruba Web Site

Moral illiteracy's solution

It's easy to lay blame for the moral decline of society on any number of things and people. And a lot of things and people are to blame. But assigning blame does nothing to solve the problems that now engulf our country. In today's commentary, Judie Brown examines this moral illiteracy and guides us toward a solution.Some of us who have been involved in battling the culture of death for more than 40 years realize that the time has come to reevaluate the way we approach our goal to end the moral madness that permeates today's culture. In that regard, one thing is certain. Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, politics is not the answer.

As 2013 approaches, we have a golden opportunity to shift gears, refocus our efforts, and begin the long but worthwhile effort to evangelize our fellow Americans. Before beginning, however, there are a few things we ought to do.

We must pray, asking God to help us see where it is that the "movement" has gone astray. We must ask what His will is for us now and in the future.

We should spend time with God, listening and contemplating, because after all, it is His children we are striving to defend. And clearly we need to retool our campaigns, be they educational, service, media, or otherwise, because we are not succeeding. Pope Benedict XVI recently shed some light on why this is so when he told the French bishops, "One of the gravest problems of our time is the ignorance of religion on the part of many men and women, also among the Catholic faithful."

Indeed, if we look around, not only at Catholics but at the general population, we recognize that even among people of faith there is a chasm between what is morally right and what is personally preferable. In other words, making up rules as one goes along in life is the most popular form of religious zeal in our day.

In fact, getting back to the "Catholic" population, sociologist Philip Schwadel has found that among Catholics — as compared to people of other religious persuasions — there is an "intensity gap" that has widened over time. For our pro-life purposes, this equates to an enormous glitch in the claims pro-life people have been making for 40 years, saying that Catholics have been among our strongest allies. Today I would suggest that this is no longer the case.

The reason for this declining intensity when it comes to the things of God was made perfectly clear by Archbishop Charles Chaput, who pulled no punches in a recent address. Explaining to his audience that illiteracy in our land goes far beyond knowing the basic facts about the history of our nation, he shared this sobering fact:

Notre Dame social researcher Christian Smith and his colleagues have tracked in great detail the spiritual lives of today's young adults and teenagers. The results are sobering. So are the implications. The real religion of vast numbers of American young people is a kind of fuzzy moral niceness, with a generic, undemanding God on duty to make us happy whenever we need him. It's what Smith calls "moralistic therapeutic deism." Or, to put it in the words of a young woman from Maryland, "It's just whatever makes you feel good about you." As Smith observes: "It's not so much that Christianity in the United States is being secularized. Rather more subtly, either Christianity is [degenerating] into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly, [it's] actively being colonized and displaced" by a very different religious faith.

This being the case, how can we hope to move the ball forward for the preborn when the most fundamental of Catholic teachings are not understood and accepted by Catholics? And how can we hope to reach out to the remaining members of the citizenry, as Catholics, if our own people are unfamiliar with, or have intentionally rejected, the most fundamental Catholic truths and the basic scientific facts regarding the human being and his identity at creation?

Oh yes, there is most certainly ignorance. But before we can begin serving the hungry — most importantly those who do not realize they hunger and thirst for justice — we have to know how to go about this. And frankly, without taking the time to seek the Lord, to be with Him, to sacrifice, and to pray we will not find the answer.

So what should we do?

Each of us should seek ways to put together interfaith prayer services from one end of this country to the other, inviting our fellow pro-life brothers and sisters to join us in reflecting on the state of things and how we must respond, seeking always God's will rather than our own. We must seek the face of Jesus.

Let us strive to make 2013 the year we deny that politics rules and remember who rules not only each of us, but our sick world and the culture of death. We end on the profound words of Pope Benedict XVI: "'Your Face, O Lord, I seek': Seeking the Face of Jesus must be the longing of all of us Christians; indeed, we are 'the generation' which seeks His face in our day, the face of the 'God of Jacob.' If we persevere in our quest for the face of the Lord, at the end of our earthly pilgrimage, He, Jesus, will be our eternal joy, our reward and glory for ever."

By Judie Brown